Week 03 Groups and teams

BPP SCHOOL OF FOUNDATION & ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIESBPP SCHOOL OF FOUNDATION & ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES
People in Organisations
Week 3: Groups and teams

BPP SCHOOL OF FOUNDATION & ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES
Part 1
Groups and teams:
potential strengths and
weaknesses

What is a group/team
and what are its
potential advantages

Group or team?
— Handy (1993) defined a group is “any collection of people who
perceive themselves to be a group”.
— This is a very wide definition – too wide, in my view, for practical
purposes.
— Rothmann and Cooper (2008: 62) suggest that a group is not
necessarily the same as a team. But the characteristics they
attach to a group are more specific and arguably also apply to a
team:
 Composed of two or more people
 Involves social interaction and influence between members
 Stable membership over time
 Share a common goal
 Recognize themselves as being part of the same group
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Influences on group/team performance

Potential benefits of teams
1. Team synergy – the team can generate
more output working together than the sum
of the individual parts.
2. A team can build up a store of shared
experiences and knowledge which can be
passed on to new members.
3. Collective decisions, may be better than
relying on a single individual’s judgement
(‘the wisdom of crowds’ argument).

Do teams reach better decisions?
— Intellective tasks are tasks for which a
"demonstrably correct solution" exists (e.g. a
maths problem). Typically, groups perform about as
well as their second best member on intellective
tasks. But for highly demonstrable tasks (e.g. a quite
simple maths problems) groups may perform at the
level of their best member.
— Judgmental tasks are ones where "correctness"
tends to be defined by the group consensus (e.g.
is the prisoner guilty or not?). Groups may outperform
the average individual, but it has been argued that
they will not consistently perform at the level of their
best members, and may sometimes perform
considerably worse than their average member.

Decision making versus creativity
— Note that reaching a decision is not the same
as creating something – e.g. an invention or
even a piece of original writing. Critics of
teams would tend to agree with Ralph Cordiner,
former chairman of General Electric:
— “If you can name for me one great discovery or
decision that was made by a committee, I will
find you the one man in that committee who
had the lonely insight – while he was shaving
or on his way to work, maybe whilst the rest of
the committee was chattering away – the lonely
insight that solved the problem and was the
basis for the decision” [quoted in James
Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, 2005,
p177]

Potential problems
with groups and
teams and how to
address them

Potential problems with groups: Groupthink

Addressing groupthink
— Use a Devil’s advocate
— Allow more time before taking the decision. Carol
Dweck (2006: 135) quotes the example of a former
CEO of General Motors, Alfred P Sloan, who was
leading a group of high-level policy makers who
seemed to have reached a quick consensus. He
then told them, ‘Gentlemen, I take we are all in
complete agreement on the decision here … Then I
propose we postpone further discussion of this
matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time
to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some
understanding of what the decision is all about’.

Potential problems with groups: Group
polarisation

Group discussion generally leads to more
polarised views

Potential causes of groups polarisation: social
comparison and social proof
— James Surowiecki (The Wisdom of Crowds,
2005, pp.185-6) suggests two possible factors
that might contribute to group polarisation:
1. Social comparison – people tend to compare
themselves to others and seek to maintain their
relative position within the group.
2. Social proof –people frequently do – or think -
what they do because of what (relevant) others
do or think. This is a very widespread
phenomenon. It can be a rational action, or it
can lead to undesirable outcomes. But it is
likely to increase the number of people taking a
more extreme position if enough individuals in
the group perceive that the majority view is
more extreme than their own.

An example of social proof in action

Potential causes of groups polarisation:
persuasive arguers and arguments
— Sunstein, in The Law of Group
Polarisation (1999), suggested that group
polarisation may be due in part to
persuasive arguers or arguments. A group
that is already partly polarised is more
likely to have a particularly persuasive
debater on the polarised side of the topic,
Also, collectively it has more people to put
forward more arguments for that point of
view, some of which the rest of the group
may find persuasive.

Potential problems with groups: the common
knowledge effect
— Many pieces of research have shown that
groups are poor at sharing information.
— Often some members of a group know
relevant information, but fail to share it.
— Or more often they share information
which supports the emerging consensus,
which is based on information available to
all group members.
— Groups tend to discount as unimportant or
unreliable information that only some
members have and which is not consistent
with the information that the whole group
has.

Addressing the common knowledge effect
— Extend the discussion period, so there is
more time for information to circulate to
the whole group.
— Instruct group members not to form
judgments before the evidence has been
reviewed.
— Frame the task as a problem to be solved
(implying a correct answer).
— Warn the group to think critically during
the task.

Potential problems with groups: the wrong
people exercising dominance
— Researchers have found that individuals higher in the
trait of dominance tend to attain more influence in face-
to-face groups than others - they speak more, gain
more control over group processes, and hold
disproportionate sway over group decisions.
— One meta-analysis of 85 years of research found “trait
dominance” to predict who emerges as the leader in
groups more consistently than any other individual
difference dimension examined, including intelligence.
— The problem is that people with high levels of “trait
dominance” are not actually any more competent than
their less dominant counterparts, so often their may be
a better leader within the group.

Why “trait dominance” has this effect
— In group settings, previous research found that individuals
higher in trait dominance are not necessarily aggressive
or obviously forceful, but they;
 make more suggestions and express their opinions more
frequently,
 speak in more assertive tones,
 make more direct eye contact, and
 use a more relaxed and expansive posture.
— These are more or less exactly the cues that people look
for when assessing a person’s competence, especially if
they do not know the person, as is generally the case in
thIs type of research experiment.

How to address the “trait dominance”
personality question
— Ask questions about people’s competence
to lead the group and take key decisions.
Are there people who have more
experience or subject knowledge, even if
they do not have the more obvious signs
of being “a natural leader”?
— Avoid situations where the group
members do not know one another. Some
findings suggest that when groups work
closely together over time, influence
becomes more closely tied to actual
abilities.

Potential problems with groups: social loafing
or the Ringelman effect
— When two people were pulling the
rope, their effort equalled 93 per cent
of the average of the individuals’
performance
— This dropped to 85 per cent of the
individuals’ performance when three
people were pulling
— And it was only 49 per cent when
eight people were pulling

So is this example typical?
— Some of the losses may be due to co-
ordination factors
— But many researchers, looking at many
different contexts, have found that ‘social
loafing’ occurs in groups and leads to
people performing at substantially lower
levels than their individual abilities would
suggest

But other people in the team may inspire better
performance: the Kohler effect
— Individuals were timed for how
long they could hold up the weight
— Then they did the same exercise,
but in pairs, with one stronger
person and one weaker one
— The stronger person could not
actually help the weaker one by
carrying more weight, though
— The results showed that the
weaker person held up the bar
for significantly longer when in
a pair than when working alone

Another example
— It’s the 1991 World Championships 4 x
400m relay
— The US team included the gold medalist,
the bronze medalist and the fifth placed
runner in the individual event
— GB had the silver medalist, but also a
losing semi-finalist in the individual 400m,
a 200m runner who rarely ran 400m and
the bronze medalist from the 400m
hurdles, who was given the final leg to run
against the world 400m champion

So what happened?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkLSnPkqIrs

So is this really typical?
— For swimming and athletics relay racing,
this sort of outcome is surprisingly
common
— A study of the swimming events at the
2008 Beijing Olympics found that the
second and third leg swimmers in the
relay beat their individual times by 0.4%
on average and the anchor leg swimmers
beat their individual times by 0.8% on
average

So how do we explain the conflicting results?
Researchers have found that social loafing is most
common when:
—People’s individual outputs cannot be evaluated
collectively;
—The tasks concerned are perceived as low in
meaningfulness or personal involvement;
—A group-level comparison standard is not
available;
—People are working with strangers;
—They expect their co-workers to perform well; and
—They see their inputs to the collective outcome as
redundant because of those of other group
members.

Part 2
Belbin team roles

Belbin’s management team theory
— Each team member contributes towards achieving the team's
objectives by performing both a functional role (determined by
their professional and/or technical knowledge), and a team role
(determined by their characteristic pattern of team interaction).
— The team needs an optimal balance in both functional and team
roles.
— The effectiveness of a team will be promoted by the extent to
which members correctly recognise and adjust themselves to the
relative strengths within the team, both in expertise and ability to
engage in specific team roles.
— Personal qualities fit members for some team roles while limiting
the likelihood that they can perform others.
— A team can deploy its technical resources to best advantage
only when it has the necessary range of team roles to ensure
sufficient teamwork.

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Belbin’s findings on winning teams
— The team ‘leader’ should be someone matching the
characteristics of a good Chairman, rather than a Shaper.
— There should be one strong Plant in the group.
— Marginally the most important roles were the Plant and
Company Worker.
— A fair spread of mental abilities generally gave the best
results.
— A spread of personal attributes offers wide team-role coverage
and helps minimize friction from people competing for the
same roles.
— Good teams adapted to potential imbalances within the team,
so all roles were filled adequately.
— Good team players showed self-restraint (especially in how
much they talked) and put the team above their personal
interests.

Belbin’s findings on unsuccessful teams
— Best predictor of failure was a team with
no very bright people.
— But teams with too many bright people
also performed worse than average.
— Teams did poorly where people simply
chose the role where they had most
functional expertise.
— Low morale did not cause poor
performance – teams’ morale fell when
they saw they were doing badly.
— Around 30% of participants struggled to fill
any team role adequately.

Part 3
Other approaches to
building and maintaining a
team

Life cycle of a team

Forming teams, especially for projects
1. Plan for team building.
2. Negotiate for team members. You do not
necessarily start by choosing the project
manager.
3. Organise the team.
4. Hold a team-building meeting.
5. Build communication links.
6. Conduct further team-building exercises.

Using an existing team
— Strong case for creating a team based on people
who have worked well before. This should
reduce the length of the forming, storming and
norming phases.
— But:
 It may not be possible just to use an existing team
– some new members may be needed.
 Danger of just doing what the team did before,
even if this is not the best approach;
 Do not assume that because a team worked
together before, everyone got on well and would
love to repeat the experience!

Assessing an existing team: effectiveness
inventory

Balancing people’s strengths in a team
— Task-oriented – people who are
‘businesslike’ and focused on getting the
job done;
— Maintenance-oriented – people who like
dealing with human issues and focus on
the person in front of them/people around
them. From a team perspective, their
strength is in having and developing
contacts, being open and outward-facing
etc.

Balancing styles within the team

Linking to Belbin’s team roles

Week 03 Groups and teams

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